Uday Shankar on why JioStar is betting big on AI after a $10 billion content push

New Delhi: India’s media industry is staring at what Uday Shankar calls a “once-in-a-generation” inflection point. 

In an exclusive interaction with BestMediaInfo.com, on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Uday Shankar, Vice Chairman, JioStar said artificial intelligence will fundamentally alter how content is created, discovered and monetised, and India cannot afford to hesitate.

“There will be huge amounts of customisation and targeting more relevant content for user cohorts,” Shankar said. 

He added that AI will significantly increase the volume of content while simultaneously compressing production timelines. “The speed at which new content gets generated will come down, and a much larger number of people will be able to participate because they are no longer constrained by distance or proximity,” he noted. 

The remarks build on a strong keynote in which Shankar positioned AI as the catalyst that can push India from being a large domestic media market to becoming the creative capital of the world. At JioStar alone, he revealed, the company has invested over $10 billion in content in the past three years, underscoring the scale of ambition. 

Calling AI a “catalyst that fundamentally rewires” content, consumer engagement and commerce, Shankar argued that the technology collapses long-standing cost barriers. He pointed to JioStar’s AI-enabled production of Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, a 100-episode live-action series completed three to five times faster than traditional pipelines.

“What this tells me is that the old barriers are vanishing. The only binding constraints left are imagination and creativity,” he said. For a country with deep storytelling traditions, that shift could be decisive.

A key piece of this strategy is JioStar’s collaboration with OpenAI. Describing it as “a very strategic collaboration,” Shankar said the partnership is built around improving recommendations, consumer experience and distribution. As India’s largest consumer platform, JioStar offers scale; OpenAI brings intelligence to discovery.

But as entry points to content fragment and consumers land on platforms through multiple digital gateways, Shankar made it clear he does not believe in locking audiences in. “Consumers should have the freedom to choose where they want to go. I don’t believe in building physical boundaries to hold them back,” he told BestMediaInfo.com. Loyalty, he added, will ultimately rest on the strength of compelling content.

In his keynote, Shankar widened the lens beyond corporate strategy. India’s media industry, now the fifth largest globally with over $30 billion in economic contribution, still accounts for less than 2% of the nearly $3 trillion global media market. AI, he argued, can help India dramatically expand that share.

“AI provides India a once-in-a-generation opportunity to become the creative capital of the world. Not the back office for the world’s content. The leader. The standard-setter,” he said.

He also issued a warning to incumbents resisting change. “Disrupt ourselves, or be disrupted,” Shankar cautioned, recalling how traditional players underestimated earlier technological waves like digital news and OTT.

For Shankar, the stakes are civilisational as much as commercial. AI, he said, shifts the advantage away from those with the deepest pockets to those with the deepest wells of culture and scale. India, with its storytelling depth and massive audience base, is uniquely positioned.

“The question is not whether India can become the global media powerhouse of the AI age. It is whether we will move fast enough to claim that position,” he said.